
Class 33 Xta go 

Book. t Q & 

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COHffUGHT DEPOSBfc 



Eeto* (Seotge a. (Sorfcon, 3X2). 



HUMANISM IN NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 
ASPECTS OF THE INFINITE MYSTERY. 
REVELATION AND THE IDEAL 
RELIGION AND MIRACLE. 
THROUGH MAN TO GOD. 
ULTIMATE CONCEPTIONS OF FAITH. 
THE NEW EPOCH FOR FAITH. 
THE WITNESS TO IMMORTALITY IN LITER- 
ATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND LIFE. 
THE CHRIST OF TO-DAY. 
IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY, 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



HUMANISM IN 
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY 



HUMANISM 

IN NEW ENGLAND 

THEOLOGY 

BY 
GEORGE A. GORDON 

MINISTER OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH BOSTON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 

1920 






5 o 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY GEORGE A. GORDON # 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



X 6 






©CI.A565410 



WITH THE DEEPEST RESPECT 

I INSCRIBE 

THIS VOLUME TO TWO FRIENDS 

DOCTOR WILLISTON WALKER 

AND 

DOCTOR JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM 

SCHOLARS WHO INHERIT 

VENERATE AND LEFT INTO UNIVERSAL RELATIONS 

THE GREAT NEW ENGLAND TRADITIONS 



NOTE 

The Essay here published appeared origi- 
nally in the Harvard Theological Review, 
April, 1907. For permission to republish it 
sincere thanks are extended to the editors 
of the Review. 

The title has been changed from "The 
Collapse of the New England Theology/' to 
" Humanism in New England Theology/ ' 
because the former title indicated only the 
passing of a historic system of thought, 
while indicating not at all the permanent 
ideas in that system. For the purposes of 
the article it seemed best to take the title 
from Dr. Foster's book, then under review. 
The new title emphasizes what the writer 
conceives to be the fundamental principle 
of every attempt to interpret the mystery 
of the Infinite. Fidelity to this principle at 
its best — the interpretation of the Eternal 
through the ideal man — would appear to 



viii Note 

be the final test of the worth of every 
scheme of thought in the service of Chris- 
tian faith. 

In this tercentennial year of the landing 
of the Pilgrim Fathers, attention is sure to 
be drawn to the great succession of New 
England divines, and it is hoped that this 
little book may assist in the discovery of 
what was of passing interest in their 
thought, and of that which must abide so 
long as faith in the God and Father of Jesus 
shall abide. A few hints are given of the 
heroic character of these men, their intel- 
lectual strength and charm — a subject 
that deserves an independent treatment. 

Some slight additions have been made to 
the Essay as it at first appeared; there are 
also some slight omissions. In other respects 
the discussion is unchanged. 

George A. Gordon 

January 2, 1920 



HUMANISM IN 
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY 




HUMANISM 

IN NEW ENGLAND 

THEOLOGY 



pHERE are in general two forms of 
humanism, the historical and the 
philosophical. Historical human- 
ism, unless otherwise guarded, is under- 
stood to cover the revival of interest in the 
Greek and Roman classics, and the devo- 
tion to the product of human genius in lit- 
erature and in art in Europe during the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To be 
sure, this sense of historical humanism is 
arbitrary. Any view taken of human nature 
among any people in any period of time is a 
form of historical humanism. In this sense 
of the word we have, to mention only lead- 
ing races, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, patristic, 



2 Humanism in New England Theology 

mediaeval, Puritan, and present-day forms 
of humanism. 

Philosophical humanism is something 
different. It is the doctrine which finds, 
whether with or without clear intention, in 
human personality the key to the character 
of the universe. Popular forms of religion 
illustrate the three ways in which this hu- 
manistic principle is applied. The worship 
of the sun is common in the history of cer- 
tain peoples. Here the direct principle is the 
interpretation of the Divine through Na- 
ture; but the indirect principle is humanis- 
tic. The sun is all-seeing, an eye filled with 
omniscience; the human mind has taken 
possession of it and moulded it to its own 
uses. Besides, when reflection arrives, it is 
seen that Nature in any of her great forms 
is known only as force, that force is known 
only as will. In the interpretation of the 
Divine through Nature, while the direct 
principle is sub-human, the indirect princi- 
ple is a phase of human personality. In the 



\ 



Humanism in New England Theology 3 

study of Egyptian monuments one is met 
with the most elaborate attempt to inter- 
pret the Divine through animal life. The 
hawk, the snake, the crocodile are a few of 
the great variety of animal forms employed 
in this interpretation. Here the direct prin- 
ciple is again sub-human, but the indirect is 
another phase of the human personality; for 
only through the consciousness of life is man 
able to enter the vast region of animal vital- 
ity and power. In polytheism, pantheism, 
and theism the human personality is used, 
in one way or another, as the guiding prin- 
ciple. The many gods of Greece or Rome are 
a reflection of the many human beings by 
whom the universe is construed. The abso- 
lute divinity of the whole and all its parts 
is but the infinite shadow of a human life 
supposed to be complete or fated to be as it 
is. The one God of the monotheistic world 
is the image of the one great human soul 
that is fit to govern all other human souls. 
Facts, real or apparent, in each case guide 



4 Humanism in New England Theology 

in the application of the principle. Jesus 
and his gospel come from the Eternal, and 
in the name of this the supreme soul and its 
fullness of honor and love, we turn, look 
back, and see through Him the Infinite 
Father. 

The general conclusion here is that every 
positive view of the universe is attained on 
the humanistic principle; the special con- 
clusion is that every form of theism is at the 
same time a form of humanism. Still fur- 
ther, the two great types of theism, the In- 
dividual God and the Social God, the Uni- 
tarian Deity and the Trinitarian Deity, are 
the issue of two different forms of the hu- 
manistic principle. For one type, the Uni- 
tarian, the individual man is the instru- 
ment of interpretation; for the other type, 
the Trinitarian, man the social being is the 
guide. The New England theology sets 
forth the Trinitarian type of theism. It is 
theological humanism of a certain kind. 
The type is bound to endure; the form in 



Humanism in New England Theology 5 

which it lived is gone. A criticism of the 
New England theology, first upon more 
obvious grounds, and then upon humanistic 
grounds, is therefore in order. It is here 
undertaken in the interest of the permanent 
type which the writer believes that theology 
set. 

What is the New England theology? In a 
general way it is the philosophy of the 
Christian faith originating with Augustine, 
reduced to severe order and expounded with 
energy and consistency by John Calvin, re- 
vived by Jonathan Edwards, and by him 
and his successors related to the speculative 
questions and religious conditions of a new 
land and a new people. From first to last it 
consisted in five main determinations, the 
old five points of Calvinism slightly rear- 
ranged: the sovereignty of God, the deprav- 
ity of man, the atonement for sin made by 
Jesus Christ, the irresistible grace of the 
Holy Spirit, and the perseverance of be- 
lievers in Christ. The system began with the 



6 Humanism in New England Theology 

Divine sovereignty, with the predestination 
of all events, with a world fallen, yet under 
the purpose of God, and with a scheme of 
salvation limited to a certain predeter- 
mined number, and exclusive of or indiffer- 
ent to the rest of mankind. Nathaniel W. 
Taylor here speaks for the entire school. In 
his discussion of the doctrine of election he 
remarks: "The simple matter of fact which 
I would state, and which constitutes the en- 
tire doctrine of election, is this: that God 
has eternally proposed to renew, and sanc- 
tify, and save a part only of mankind." 
The perseverance of true believers must be 
read in the light of the irresistible grace of 
the Holy Spirit; this again must be traced, 
through the sacrifice of Christ, back to the 
elective decree of the Most High, and still 
further this determination to save only a 
part of mankind must be seen to be one 
phase of God's absolute sovereignty in the 
universe. 
Upon this general framework of belief all 



Humanism in New England Theology 7 

the New England theologians were agreed. 
For them there were but two systems of 
theology, the Calvinistic and the Arminian, 
and for the latter they had, in general 
and in particular, something very like con- 
tempt. So far as I have been able to search 
their writings, no one of these thinkers has 
defined the science of theology. They did 
not conceive definition to be necessary. 
They had absorbed from childhood the Cal- 
vinistic scheme; it took tremendous, almost 
exclusive, hold of their intellect. When they 
studied the Bible it seemed to look into 
their souls nearly from every page, and the 
history of this sad world was the conclusive 
witness to the truth of its doctrine concern- 
ing man. Jonathan Edwards, the elder and 
the younger, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hop- 
kins, Nathanael Emmons, Nathaniel W. 
Taylor, and Edwards A. Park — the great 
masters of the school — were at one here. 
Horace Bushnell is the pioneer of a new 
movement, and therefore does not in this 



8 Humanism in New England Theology 

connection concern us. Samuel Harris was a 
deep thinker in theology, and an eminent 
teacher; but he too had outgrown the old 
New England categories. Professor Park 
was the last of the New England theologi- 
ans. These thinkers without exception held 
to the sovereignty of God, whether con- 
strued as including or as not including the 
fall; they held to the innate depravity of 
mankind — they traced this universal con- 
dition of the race to the sin of the first man, 
however they may have differed with older 
thinkers or among themselves in the ac- 
count given of the relation of the individual 
to Adam; they were agreed that without 
atonement there is no forgiveness of sin, 
and that this necessary atonement had been 
made by Jesus Christ; they were united in 
the belief that the Holy Spirit is essential to 
the conversion and regeneration of man — 
that till the Spirit's influence descends upon 
him, man is helpless in the presence of 
his moral obligation, that when the Divine 



Humanism in New England Theology g 

grace comes it is irresistible, and that its 
dispensation is ruled, not by the forlorn 
condition of a humanity lying in wicked- 
ness, but by the Divine decree; and they 
were unanimous in their conviction that true 
believers in Jesus Christ will persevere to 
the end and be saved with an everlasting 
salvation. Upon this last point great em- 
phasis was placed. It represented the final 
issue of the aboriginal sovereign decree; it 
was held with a vigor answering to the cer- 
tainty of that decree; and hence any hesita- 
tion here was regarded as a reflection upon 
the Supreme honor and power. Oliver 
Cromwell, in his question, 'Does once a 
Christian mean always a Christian? ' repre- 
sents the seriousness of the entire New Eng- 
land school upon this subject. A certain 
minister once complained to President 
Sparks, of Harvard, that his church was 
greatly distressed over the perseverance of 
the saints; to whom President Sparks re- 
plied in the modern spirit, but at the same 



io Humanism in New Englaftd Theology 

time failing in insight into the Puritan char- 
acter, 'Our trouble here is with the perse- 
verance of the sinners.' It is a sign of the 
distance we have come that the famous re- 
mark of Dr. Williams, of Providence, upon 
this subject is cherished as a supreme ex- 
ample of humor in theological debate. It 
was, however, far enough from this charac- 
ter in the mind of Dr. Williams. Meeting 
one day a preacher of Arminian opinions 
and demanding of him a proof-text for the 
monstrous belief that a soul once converted 
to God could fall away and be lost forever, 
and receiving in answer the citation of the 
parable of the ten virgins who all went 
forth to meet the bridegroom, but of whom 
five fell away and were lost, the contemptu- 
ous rejoinder of Dr. Williams was, that any 
man who believed a doctrine of Scripture 
on account of what five women said, and 
five foolish women at that, deserved to go 
to perdition. 
In the presentation of these five points 



Humanism in New England Theology II 

there were among the New England theo- 
logians noble rivalries and generous differ- 
ences; there were, too, marked superiorities 
and inferiorities in acuteness and vigor, in 
force and felicity of exposition, in dialectical 
and apologetic skill; but with the single ex- 
ception of Edwards, they rarely went out- 
side the Calvinistic plan, and without ex- 
ception that plan stood as the final thought 
upon man's origin, history, and destiny. 
Dr. Foster, 1 while sensitive to the personal 
force of Edwards, is strangely wanting, for 
a mind of his candor, in appreciation of 
Edwards's rational strength. In ranking the 
founder of the school below Taylor and 
Park, Dr. Foster cannot be said to appreci- 
ate the solitary distinction of Edwards. 
Taylor and Park are, after Edwards, the 
acutest thinkers in the school, but in com- 
pass, in depth, in fertility of rational de- 
vice, and above all, in speculative genius, 
they are not to be mentioned by the side of 
1 The Collapse of the New England Theology, 



12 Humanism in New England Theology 

Edwards. A full examination of the unpub- 
lished writings of Edwards would show a 
mind of singular openness and of unceas- 
ing movement. When a young man he 
wrote: 

I observe that old men seldom have any ad- 
vantage of new discoveries, because these are 
beside a way of thinking they are used to. 
Resolved, if ever I live to years, that I will be 
impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended 
discoveries, and receive them, if rational, how 
long soever I have been used to another way 
of thinking. 

It can be said that this resolve, made in 
his early manhood, exerted over Edwards 
a continuous influence, an influence more 
decided in his last years. In his published 
writings Edwards occasionally forgets the 
traditional system and goes forth in the 
great quest of truth. His essays on "The 
Will," "The Nature of Virtue/' "The End 
for which God made the World," and "Re- 
ligious Affections" are untrammeled dis- 
cussions. They are related logically to what 



Humanism in New England Theology 13 

in Edwards is deepest and most truly his 
own — his conception of the absolutely per- 
fect God — and they succeed or fail accord- 
ing to their fidelity or infidelity to that con- 
ception. Edwards's size and passion win 
even for his errors a kind of consecration; 
while his occasional free movement in the 
pure vision of truth, out beyond the bound- 
aries of tradition, marks him as unique in 
his school. 

Still, we must return to the simple fact 
that Calvinism was from first to last the 
philosophy of man and man's world held 
and taught by these thinkers. Side issues 
there were many and important; large 
questions of theodicy were often in debate, 
especially in the case of Bellamy and Hop- 
kins and Taylor; speculation concerning 
the moral government of God was rife; the 
consideration of human freedom called into 
existence, in addition to the great treatise 
of Edwards, a voluminous literature; the 
Divine life in man soared away into a wild 



14 Humanism in New England Theology 

idealism as in the Hopkinsian conception ot 
love; now and then these thinkers, and em- 
phatically Edwards and Hopkins, struck 
notes more akin to the music of Spinoza 
than to that of John Calvin, and we hear in 
them answering strains to the lofty one- 
sidedness of the words, "He that truly loves 
God must not desire that God should love 
him in return"; yet, when this is freely ad- 
mitted, it must be said that after these ex- 
cursions these New England divines one 
and all returned to the main outline of the 
Calvinistic scheme, and settled in it as the 
final account of their religion. 



II 

HAT this system of opinion has 
lost control of the religious mind 
of the present generation will be 
universally admitted. There are many 
teachers of religion with no theology, many 
with a new, and still more with a crude 
theology, but nowhere do we find men of 
modern training and respectable intellect 
holding the New England theology. Our 
question then is, How came this system of 
belief, dominant in our churches for more 
than one hundred and fifty years, suddenly 
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century 
to lose its hold upon thinking minds? What 
causes brought about its sudden and final 
collapse? 

In any fair account of this collapse, while 
the chief blame must lie with the system 
itself, some blame will be seen to attach 
to the state of the public mind. There has 



i6 Humanism in New England Theology 

arisen within the Christian Church con- 
siderable indifference to speculative think- 
ing. Practical interests have been engross- 
ing, as they should be, but the dependence 
of living, practical interests upon funda- 
mental ideas, and upon clearness on funda- 
mental subjects, has not been seen. The 
mill-round of the mind has been substituted 
for the sun-path. An indescribable pettiness, 
a mean kind of retail trade, has largely 
taken possession of the teachers of religion. 
The eternal spaces in which, like the planet, 
the world of practical interest lives and 
moves and has its being, have fallen from 
the public mind. Hence questions of the 
origin of sin and its permission in a universe 
over which God is sovereign, serious think- 
ing upon moral government, the nature of 
virtue, the character of disinterested love, 
the decree of the Most High and the eternal 
economy of his being have not appealed to 
this generation. To the discredit of the 
generation be it said. 



Humanism in New England Theology xy 

This age is characterized by a strong 
aversion to severe thinking. Immediacy has 
become a habit, perhaps a disease. Its 
motto is he that runs may read, and the 
reader who intends to run as he reads must 
not choose for his race-course the New Eng- 
land divinity. The New England writers are 
far from dull; they know how to express 
themselves with precision and vigor, but 
they are thinkers, men who deal with ideas, 
who set ideas in new lights, and support 
their views with definition and argument. 
They tax the intellect of the reader, and in 
return for his toil they make him aware of 
his intelligence, a thing that does not always 
happen at the present day with books on 
theological subjects. The discourses of Ed- 
wards and Bellamy and Hopkins and Em- 
mons were spoken to New England farmers, 
their wives, and their sons and daughters; 
and when they were published they were 
read largely by the same class of persons. 
There was in those days eagerness to attack 



18 Humanism in New England Theology 

and master a difficult subject; keen interest 
in matter that, in order to be understood, 
had to be read a score of times; enthusiasm 
for some attainment in rational strength 
and in argumentative skill. To-day what- 
ever cannot be understood in the twinkling 
of an eye is generally regarded with aver- 
sion. The supreme heresy in thinking is the 
call to intellectual toil. The kindergarten, 
while it may be good for children, when it 
becomes a universal method, makes escape 
from intellectual childhood difficult. If 
severe thinking were as much admired in 
the New England of to-day as it was in 
the New England of fifty and one hundred 
years ago, more respect would be felt for 
the old divines, and their best works would 
be oftener read. 

There is in the public mind the absence of 
a due sense of the difficulties that inhere in 
every possible view of the world. Criticism 
of the New England system has been cur- 
rent for so long that it has gained possession 



Humanism in New England Theology ig 

of the thoughtful public. The criticism is 
largely well founded; but it is apt to lead to 
utter revolt from the works of these able 
and honest men. They are blamed for failing 
to do what no mortal man has yet succeeded 
in doing, presenting a philosophy of man's 
world true to all the known facts and giving 
complete satisfaction to the reason. In our 
new thinking we accept at our own hands 
a philosophy far enough from complete ra- 
tionality, and we refuse to do the same by 
the men of the older thinking. It would do 
our philosophy of religion good to be con- 
sidered and debated by the New England 
divines. We might find, perhaps, that all 
the difficulties and impossibilities are not 
with the ancient creed, that some serious 
mysteries need clearing up at our hands. 

While fair-minded men will, I think, ad- 
mit the truth of this indictment against the 
public mind of to-day, the charge must be 
renewed that the chief causes of collapse 
must be found in the character of the an- 



20 Humanism in New England Theology 

cient creed. The New England theology had 
taken for granted that it was substantially 
the final theology. While resting in this easy 
assumption it was, to the amazement and 
incredulity of its latest masters, suddenly 
outgrown. It fell from power and passed 
away because it was outgrown by the reli- 
gious consciousness whose interpreter and 
servant it professed to be. On this ground 
its discharge was inevitable. The full sig- 
nificance of this explanation will become 
apparent, I hope, through the following 
observations. 

It must never be forgotten that the New 
England divinity was not in any profound 
sense an original movement of thought. It 
was a new version of the system of John 
Calvin, in whom again it must be observed 
the system was not original. As is well 
known, the New England theology, while 
derived from Calvin, dates from Augustine. 
Thoughts of infinite moment are found in 
rich profusion in the writings of Augustine, 



Humanism in New England Theology 21 

and next to his ecclesiasticism, the outline 
of a theological system contained in his 
works is the least of his services to the 
Christian intellect and spirit. There are in 
the profound spiritual and speculative life 
of Augustine hints toward a philosophy of 
Christianity other and infinitely nobler than 
that which he outlined, an implicit philos- 
ophy which continues to invest his great 
spirit with enduring fascination. 

Still, the outline of dogma made by 
Augustine has been the basis of the tradi- 
tional scheme from that day to this. His 
idea of a race universally depraved, traced 
to the sin of Adam as its source, has been a 
ruling idea. His doctrine of salvation on the 
ground of Christ's atonement, by irresist- 
ible grace calling into existence saving faith 
and securing the perseverance of the be- 
liever, has been a ruling doctrine. His 
scheme of deliverance as originating in the 
decree of God, and as contemplating the 
redemption of only a part of the fallen and 



22 Humanism in New England Theology 

miserable race of man, has been the domi- 
nating scheme. From Augustine's day to 
this the traditional theology has never held 
the idea of anything other or better than a 
salvation of the remnant. Therefore, not- 
withstanding the order and vigor imparted 
to this scheme by John Calvin, and the 
valid distinctions, fruitful modifications, 
and noble expansions introduced by Ed- 
wards and his successors down to Professor 
Park, in whom the line terminates, the 
philosophy of man's life in this world and 
in the next presented in the New England 
theology is essentially that of the great 
Bishop of Hippo. 

The New England scheme is thus wanting 
in fundamental originality. It arises out of 
no face-to-face contact with the problem of 
man's existence; it never occurs to it to 
interrogate the vast and tragic reality at 
first hand. Man and man's world were not 
independent and absorbing objects of study 
to the New England divines; man and his 



Humanism in New England Theology 23 

world did not possess their imagination; the 
knowledge of human beings already in ex- 
istence did not in them raise the hope of 
richer knowledge; the scientific spirit, of 
which Bacon was the great modern prophet, 
the attitude toward their world of inquiry, 
concrete and severe methods of study and 
hope, did not control them; the human real- 
ity before them did not win them into an 
original relation to it, nor fascinate them 
onward to fresh discoveries, nor so engage 
them that they could not let it go till they 
had wrung from it by direct struggle its 
divine secret. These men were not seers; 
they beheld no new worlds of ideas rising up 
out of the mighty order of fact; they found 
no richer and deeper meanings in man's 
nature and history, such as would have in- 
evitably suggested a new plan of salvation. 
They made little use, as will be seen later, 
of their Master in seeking a principle for the 
interpretation of the moral character of the 
universe; like thousands before them they 



24 Humanism in New England Theology 

missed entirely the meaning of their Mas- 
ter's promise concerning the spirit of truth. 
They assumed that the religious vision of 
the world was complete as given in the 
New Testament; they did not grasp the 
fact that the words of Jesus are spirit and 
life, that they are an organism of spirit and 
life; they never dreamed that Christianity 
is on its intellectual side the soul of pure 
search after all truth, the soul of assimila- 
tion to its own growing organism of all the 
special truths in all the different depart- 
ments of human inquiry and concern; the 
soul that seizes these threads of discovered 
being wherever found, and that weaves 
them into the ever-greatening structure of 
its own faith. Like their predecessors, for 
more than a thousand years, these New 
England divines were without original vi- 
sion of the Divine universe; they were 
mainly thinkers within traditional lines, 
expounders, advocates, diffusers of beliefs 
that had been fixed by ecclesiastical author- 



Humanism in New England Theology 25 

ity. All this is matter of fact. Whether they 
are to be praised or blamed for this attitude 
may indeed admit of difference of opinion; 
concerning the attitude itself, there is no 
room for difference. I repeat that there is no 
distinct original consciousness of man and 
man's world in the New England divines; 
nor is their vision, in the full meaning of the 
word, deep, comprehensive, free. They all 
read the tragic reality through the ancient 
categories. They recall the traditional 
scheme essentially unaltered, and they turn 
it into a philosophy of the Christian faith 
for themselves and their people. That such 
genius for theology as we find in Edwards, 
Hopkins, N. W. Taylor, and Edwards A. 
Park should have gone this dreary way is 
indeed deplorable. There are few greater 
warnings against the evil of self-commit- 
ment to tradition. The suppression of indi- 
viduality, the settled disregard of inward 
misgiving and protest, the sacrifice of the 
ideal of reason and conscience in the service 



26 Humanism in New England Theology 

of faith, have seldom presented themselves 
in more conspicuous examples. Strong 
enough as these men were to overturn tradi- 
tion and throw the contents of faith into 
new moulds, fitted as they were for original 
vision and interpretation of human exist- 
ence, they one and all adopted, adapted, 
and tinkered the ancient scheme while 
God's great growing world was speeding 
forward heedless of their poor categories. 
That a new version of an ancient and in- 
competent system, however impressed with 
the vitality of powerful minds, and however 
the bewildered masses allowed themselves 
to be driven to rest in it, could not last in a 
free world of which it is no true account 
should seem to reasonable men only natural, 
and indeed inevitable. Originality in theo- 
logical theory, fundamental constructive 
originality, there has been none from the 
age of Augustine to the present generation. 
Under such circumstances, in a growing 
world, there is no need of a ghost to tell us 



Humanism in New England Theology 27 

that there is something rotten in our theo- 
logical Denmark. 

It may be contended that there is one 
fairly original element in New England 
theology, its theodicy. Several of the greater 
masters of the school were deeply concerned 
with the fact of moral evil and its existence, 
in a world over which the righteous God is 
sovereign. Here the discussion turned upon 
two subjects, one the Divine perfections, 
the other the freedom of man. Dr. Foster 
says, "New England theology to the end 
sacrificed the doctrine of freedom to that of 
the Divine perfections." 1 This is true, but 
it is not the whole truth. The New England 
theologians failed both in their conception 
of the Divine perfection and in their idea of 
human freedom. Here, for example, is one 
of the multitude of utterances in Edwards 
concerning God. He had been speaking with 
his father about his religious experiences: 

And when the discourse ended I walked 
1 The Collapse of the New England Theology, 



28 Humanism in New England Theology 

abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father's 
pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walk- 
ing there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, 
there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the 
glorious majesty and grace of God that I know 
not how to express. After this . . the appear- 
ance of everything was altered; there seemed 
to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appear- 
ance of Divine glory in almost everything. 
God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and 
love, seemed to appear in everything; in the 
sun and moon and stars; in the clouds and the 
blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the 
water and all nature. I often used to sit and 
view the moon for continuance; and in the day 
spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky 
to behold the sweet glory of God in these 
things; in the meantime, singing forth with a 
low voice, my contemplations of the Creator 
and Redeemer. 

In this poetic way Edwards sets forth in 
his early manhood his conception of God, a 
conception that grew upon him to the end, 
and that drew into itself his whole being 
and all its interests. Here is the point at 
which the modern mind arraigns Edwards. 



Humanism in New England Theology 2Q 

His vision is of a God absolute in love, and 
yet that vision in no fundamental sense 
rules the evolution of his thought. The con- 
clusion to which Edwards comes concerning 
man's world is an appalling contradiction of 
the original vision and premise. This con- 
tradiction would not have been possible if 
Edwards had conceived the divine perfec- 
tion in the spirit of his Master Christ. In 
Edwards's idea of perfection, and in that of 
his successors, there inheres a fatal defect. 
This idea of perfection is not what we mean 
when we apply it to the best of men and 
then add thereto infinity. In the bulk to 
which the idea is raised an immense subtle 
evil has crept in. Something may be good 
in him that evil is in me; this is the hidden 
germ of unhallowed issue in the vast and 
imposing conception. So much for the 
New England theology and the Divine 
perfections. 

The idea of human freedom entertained 
by the masters of this school is formal and 



30 Humanism in New England Theology 

even superficial. Had they taken Augus- 
tine's position here, and held with him that 
the good will is alone free; had they seen 
that it is the inevitable tendency of the 
Divine perfection and every other form of 
moral power to lead the will from bondage 
to freedom, they might have done perma- 
nent service to theology by their theodicy. 
As it stands, their discussion, both of the 
Divine perfection and of human freedom, 
is without substantial originality. 

Edwards did not care primarily for the 
freedom of man; he cared for it because of 
its relation to the sovereignty of God. Only 
such freedom could he see as would not con- 
flict with the Divine sovereignty. His idea 
of freedom is simply the unhindered ex- 
pression of fixed habit either good or bad. 
There is surely little originality here. 
Deeper than the power of habit he did not 
go, nor did he at any time divine the exist- 
ence in man of a rational order that might 
overturn worlds of evil habit. Plato had 



Humanism in New England Theology 31 

taught that right education consists in tak- 
ing pleasure, under the rule of fixed habit, 
in the proper objects of pleasure. Deeper 
than this Edwards does not go; his discus- 
sion does not go behind the pleasures, good 
or bad, in which men take a habitual in- 
terest. 

Nathaniel W. Taylor fixed attention upon 
the power to the contrary in the will. So far 
so good; such power is doubtless there; but 
Taylor has done nothing to make it evident, 
nothing to show its worth, supposing it to 
exist. Taylor cares no more for human free- 
dom than does Edwards. He argues in favor 
of freedom that he may save man's respon- 
sibility, and thus clear God of accounta- 
bility for the introduction and continuance 
of sin in the world. Taylor's freedom is for- 
mal, and exists mainly for apologetic pur- 
poses. Into the real freedom of man, or the 
point of contact between man's capacity 
for real freedom and the Divine perfection 
that works for man's freedom, Taylor had 



32 Humanism in New England Theology 

little insight. He was an able and an honest 
man; at the same time he was under the 
spell of abstractions. A power to the con- 
trary which in the entire history of man has 
never been exercised is something to which 
only the consciousness of an apologist can 
bear witness. It is no true account of man's 
spirit; it is an abstraction, a dream. The 
freedom of man is no such miserable ab- 
straction and dialectical device; it is life 
concurrent with the truth of things, and the 
relation of the spirit of truth to a will in 
error is in such a display of the persuasions 
of truth that the reasonable soul shall be 
eventually won by them from bondage to 
the liberty of the sons of God. Freedom is 
not the mere possibility to go either of two 
ways at the fork of which a man may stand. 
Such an idea of freedom is trivial. Freedom 
is insight into the true order of existence, 
susceptibility to that insight, obedience to 
it and harmonious existence under it. If one 
is without that insight, one has capacity for 



Humanism in New England Theology 33 

it, and the Divine perfection is the assur- 
ance that it will be ultimately won. 

The relation of Professor Park, one of the 
acutest masters of the school, to the ques- 
tion of freedom is interesting. Park main- 
tains that the will' always is as the greatest 
apparent good. If this is the case, either of 
two conclusions follows. If this apparent 
good is unreal, God is alone responsible for 
this condition of the individual will. If the 
apparent good is real good, the individual 
will is good, and again God is the efficient 
cause. But how are we to make the transfer 
from apparent good to essential good? Obvi- 
ously there is but one answer; it all depends 
upon the behavior of the Most High. That 
a mind as alert and acute as that of Park 
should have been brought to such a pass is 
indeed strange. It could not have happened 
if the thinker in question had been pro- 
foundly concerned with the free life of man. 
In that case no one would have been keener 
in the observation that man's rational na- 



34 Humanism in New England Theology 

ture contains the provision, under the illu- 
mination of experience, of escape from 
the field of illusion into the world of true 
eternal good. This rational nature, under 
the illumination of experience, finds no 
adequate recognition in the thought of the 
New England divines, and therefore, here 
in the sphere of their special activity, no 
less than in their general scheme, their 
work has passed from power because it 
was wanting both in originality and in 
depth. 

This ancient theology had in it from the 
first, and preserved untouched to the end, 
a fatal contradiction. According to this 
scheme the world was made by God, and 
yet the world in its misfortune and misery 
was condemned by God as if it had made 
itself. When any good was found in the 
world, it was at once argued that it was due 
to God and his sovereign decree; when 
moral evil and misery and death were dis- 
covered in the world, it was argued that 



Humanism in New England Theology 35 

they were due to man and his abuse of his 
freedom. If the Divine decree did not in- 
clude the fall of man, then the world broke 
from the Divine control and remained 
mainly triumphant against God; if the Di- 
vine decree did include the fall and all the 
events in human history, then men were 
obliged to read the character of God from 
that history. Universal predestination and 
partial redemption either eventually wreck 
the scheme in which they meet or they 
work a woe infinitely deeper; they wreck 
confidence in the moral character of God. 
Nothing in the high and serious thinking of 
men is more melancholy than the perpetual 
see-saw between the universal decree of 
God and the universal depravity of man for 
which the human will is held accountable; 
between the racial need of redemption and 
the partial response of God in the gift of 
grace; between this partial bestowment of 
the Holy Spirit and the universality of the 
atonement as held by the New England di- 



36 Humanism in New England Theology 

vines; between the sovereignty of the God 
of love and the eternal damnation of a vast 
portion of mankind. In view of this interior 
inconsistency, both intellectual and moral, 
the wonder is not that the scheme eventu- 
ally collapsed, but that it endured so long. 
In a fair field and no favor, in open and free 
discussion, it would have gone to the wall 
centuries ago. Authority, sentiment, de- 
spair, in the presence of the task of find- 
ing a better philosophy, fear lest precious 
things should be exposed to peril if reason 
took a bolder range, and the conservative 
instinct in man doubtless combined to pro- 
tect and perpetuate this crude scheme; still, 
to authority, to the absence of full free- 
dom in the Christian Church, this creed is 
chiefly indebted for its thousand years of 
gloom. v 

It must be said that in much of its think- 
ing the New England theology was artifi- 
cial. By this I do not mean that it so ap- 
peared to these thinkers, but simply that 



Humanism in New England Theology 57 

their method led them away from human 
life. Few things are more dreary than the 
New England discussions on the atone- 
ment. Till Bushnell arrives upon the scene 

— and he is not in the New England circle, 
he is the prophet of another order of ideas 

— the atonement in all the phases of its 
presentation was as nearly destitute of ethi- 
cal value as anything could well be. The 
moral Governor of the world, under whose 
government sin came into the world, could 
not forgive it until a life of infinite worth 
had been offered as a satisfaction to the 
majesty of violated law. This was the cen- 
tral proposition round which the dreary 
and dead debate proceeded. A moral God 
played only a nominal part in the scheme, 
a Father in heaven had no part in it, the 
spiritual nature of the soul was ignored by 
it, and it never even got a glimpse into the 
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Of no 
other section of New England divinity can 
one say without some qualification that it 



38 Humanism in New England Theology 

is a simple rubbish-heap of dead opinions. 
Anything can be taught in a divinity school 
by heroic scholars, and anything can be 
studied and understood, in part, by persist- 
ent students; but ideas there are that can- 
not be preached with any degree of interest 
where men are ethically sound and men- 
tally sane. The record of the ways and 
means, whereby able and good but mis- 
guided men tried to force successive gener- 
ations of believers into emotional states 
answering to the requirements of the gov- 
ernmental theory of the atonement, is a 
record of the rankest kind of unreality. It 
is not to the point to say, what indeed is 
true, that there are worse forms of the doc- 
trine of the atonement than the govern- 
mental. The contention is that here is one 
reason for the passing of the system from 
living interest. At a point of infinite depth, 
the relation of the human soul in sin to the 
Eternal goodness, it had thoughts only 
legal, forensic, mechanical. 



Humanism in New England Theology 3Q 

Indeed, it may be said that every historic 
phase of the atonement, except the moral 
phase, reveals uncured the malady of the 
human mind to which Jesus spoke his heal- 
ing gospel. That malady is the issue of a 
false conception of the character of God. 
The sacrificial systems of the world were 
built upon the idea that the Divine power 
must be placated if sinful man would be for- 
given. Propitiation is at the heart of them 
all; and so deep into the mind of the most 
enlightened races has this hideous distor- 
tion of the character of the Eternal Father 
gone that the gospel of Christ, perfected in 
his death as the servant of truth and love 
and attested thereby, would probably have 
failed of gaining a governing influence over 
those to whom it was addressed had it not 
been translated by the apostles into the 
sacrificial language of the people of Israel. 
The soundness of this remark is confirmed 
by the purpose and method of the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. That great 



40 Humanism in New England Theology 

writer discovers the pure spirituality of the 
gospel of Christ, its transcendence of the 
old sacrificial system of Israel; and yet, in 
order to be understood in this endeavor, he 
is compelled to translate this transcendent 
and spiritual faith into the language of 
priest, altar, and sacrifice. Thus deep was 
the mental malady in the apostolic age. 
And here we see clearly how that which is 
central and most precious in the gospel of 
Jesus, his idea of the eternal, fatherly love 
of God, was endangered by this translation 
into the unclean idiom of the world. For the 
historic forms of the atonement are a chap- 
ter in religious pathology; they have a great 
and a pathetic human interest. They dis- 
cover abysmal depths in man; they disclose 
the vastness and wildness of man's world. 
At the same time they contribute nothing 
toward the positive showing of the way in 
which the soul escapes from its sin. They 
build upon the old notion which Jesus came 
to displace. In their successive forms they 



Humanism in New England Theology 41 

perpetuate the idea that God is essentially 
unfriendly to poor, erring mortals; that He 
requires to be appeased by some offering, 
propitiated by some costly sacrifice or satis- 
fied in some public relation of his character, 
before He can lift into hope a penitent child. 
From the point of view of the conception of 
God as Father, the group of ideas perpetu- 
ated in all phases of the atonement, except 
the moral phase, are the worst blasphemy 
ever offered to the Most High. They come 
from religion as conceived and operated by 
the priesthood of the world; they are con- 
tradicted and set at naught by religion as 
conceived and presented by the greater 
prophets of the race, and supremely by the 
supreme prophet, Jesus of Nazareth. His 
parable of the Lost Son is his version of his 
own heart, his version, too, of the heart of 
God. The idea that heals the malady of the 
human mind is the idea of God in the teach- 
ing and life and death of Jesus. In this re- 
currence upon the supreme idea of Chris- 



42 Humanism in New England Theology 

tian faith the New England divines do not 
count. They did nothing, at this momen- 
tous point, to deliver man from his blas- 
phemy against God; unwittingly they did 
much to confirm him in unworthy thoughts 
of the Eternal lover of men. The free world 
of to-day has no thanks for them here; in 
strict truth they deserve none. 

One of the ablest treatises in the New 
England divinity is Dr. N. W. Taylor's 
book, "The Moral Government of God." 
President Porter informs us that "'The 
Moral Government of God' was the great 
thought of Dr. Taylor's intellect." "It occu- 
pied his mind more than any and every 
other subject." I read this treatise while a 
student in the seminary more than forty 
years ago, and I was then greatly impressed 
with its power. I have been reading it again, 
and I still recognize the ability shown in it. 
The plan of the work is large, the discussion 
is thorough and coherent, the order reminds 
one of the successive deductions in the 



Humanism in New England Theology 43 

ethics of Spinoza, the clearness, energy, and 
precision of statement are beyond question. 
But when all this has been said, it must be 
added that the work is essentially artificial. 
It is a discussion largely in the air, away 
from the great realities and forces of human 
life; it is abstract, dialectical, going mainly 
in the strength of presuppositions, wanting 
in concreteness, wholly wanting in the scien- 
tific spirit. It is divided into three sections. 
First, the "Moral Government of God in 
the Abstract"; second, the "Moral Govern- 
ment of God in Nature"; third, the "Moral 
Government of God in the Scriptures." The 
analogy upon which the work is constructed 
is civil government. For Dr. Taylor God 
was a sovereign ruler after the pattern of 
civil rulers upon earth. This was the 
thought that chiefly occupied his intellect, 
and the idea which is basal in Christianity 
and the heart and soul of its message, the 
idea of the Eternal Father, had no percep- 
tible influence upon this thinker in his chief 



/ 



44 Humanism in New England Theology 

contribution to the theological thought of 
his time. If New England divinity, in the 
hands of one of its greatest representatives, 
could be so much in the air, so far away 
from man's moral world, so unaware of the 
supreme conception of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ, it should not seem strange that 
among weaker men it became still more 
unreal. 

One of the great merits claimed for the 
New England divinity was its distinction 
between natural and moral ability. All men 
had the natural ability to repent of their 
sins and perfectly to keep the law of God; all 
men were without the moral ability, that is, 
the willingness to repent of their sins and to 
meet their perfect obligation to the law of 
God. There is perhaps some merit in the 
distinction. There is an impulse, often 
enough unliberated, in the rational nature 
of the soul, a reserve of energy in the form 
of capacity below the structure of evil 
habit, to which the Christian appeal may 



Humanism in New England Theology 45 

sink. If looked at in this way, the distinction 
may be considered valid. The whole capac- 
ity of the soul is not expressed in the current 
bad character. There is a capacity below the 
actual evil character to which the sovereign 
moral appeal may come, a capacity which 
when spoken to with might may become a 
blazing power in which the evil character is 
consumed. But this was not the way in 
which the New England divines were in the 
habit of regarding the distinction. It was 
mainly an apologetic device, in aid of the 
theologian when he was hard pressed in 
other parts of his system. Why should God 
involve the whole race with Adam and thus 
necessitate a first choice that was evil and 
an endless succession of choices all bad? 
The reply was, there was no necessity in the 
case. Man had the natural power not to sin, 
the natural ability perfectly to meet the 
demands of moral law. Why should God 
elect only a portion of this fallen race to sal- 
vation and thus exclude the rest? The reply 



46 Humanism in New England Theology 

was, that God does not exclude the rest; 
they have the power to repent of their sins, 
to believe on Jesus Christ, to cast them- 
selves upon God for salvation and be saved. 
But no man comes to God unless he is under 
the influence of the Holy Spirit, and why 
should the non-elect be left beyond the pale 
of the Spirit's influence? The reply is, that 
they are without excuse in not coming to 
God without the special aid of the Spirit 
seeing they have the full natural ability to 
come. Thus ran the wretched riot of dialec- 
tical unreality. Professor Park, when he 
came, in the course of his famous lectures, 
to the discussion of natural ability and 
moral inability, was in the habit of remark- 
ing to his class with grim humor, 

" Ye who have tears to shed, 
Prepare to shed them now." 

The memory of that wild wilderness in 
which was no living thing, not even scor- 
pions or flying plagues, a wilderness pre- 
destined never to rejoice or blossom as the 



Humanism in New England Theology 47 

rose, is indeed a memory of the dire distress 
of the Christian Church in New England. 

Another conspicuous defect of the New 
England divinity was its restricted use of 
human reason. With all its confidence in 
reason and its bold rationalism in certain 
fields of inquiry, it set fixed bounds to the 
operation of free thought, saying here shall 
thy proud waves be stayed. It inherited the 
unholy distinction between natural and re- 
vealed religion; it gave free scope to the 
human mind only in the sphere of natural 
religion. The Bible, as the record of revealed 
religion, was indeed the subject of scholar- 
ship, historical, textual, interpretative; but 
when the history was clear, the text settled, 
and the interpretation fixed, the function of 
reason was at an end. The result must be 
accepted, whether it was the story in the 
Book of Exodus about God hardening Pha- 
raoh's heart that he might destroy him, or 
the account in the Gospels of Christ's sur- 
render of his life for the good of the world. 



48 Humanism in New England Theology 

Theology became a construction of texts 
from all parts of the Hebrew and Christian 
Scriptures. The leading doctrines — pre- 
destination, election, depravity, propitia- 
tion, forensic justification, the limitation of 
moral opportunity to this life, everlasting 
punishment of the wicked and the heavenly 
life of believers — were found in texts in all 
the Books of the Bible, and were accorded 
equal value wherever found. If the moral 
sense revolted at the result, as in Emmons's 
sermon on "Reprobation," or the doctrine 
of election advocated as baldly by N. W. 
Taylor as by any of the school, so much the 
worse for the moral sense. Here is Scripture 
properly interpreted and here is the result; 
accept or reject it; there it stands, and from 
its finality there is no appeal. A theology 
constructed in this way built into itself the 
soul of revolt, the sure prophecy of its 
own ultimate destruction. There can be no 
forced results of an abiding character in the 
sphere of thought. Coercion is something 



Humanism in New England Theology 49 

to which the human intellect cannot per- 
manently surrender. Authority itself is 
bound to become the subject of arrest, trial, 
and judgment. While that day is deferred 
the Bible stands outside the process of the 
critical intellect; and from its vast compass 
the system of traditional dogma may be 
established. But the thing established on 
authority can last only while the authority 
lasts; when the authority decays, the super- 
structure of dogma falls to the ground. 

As we look back from our own free world, 
this restriction of reason to a particular 
field, this exclusion of it from the field of 
profoundest moment, seems very strange. 
Why did these men fail to learn from the 
process of the Holy Spirit in their own 
souls? Why did they not see that life is the 
parent of literature; that wherever God is 
in the life of men, in their thoughts, feelings, 
purposes, and achievements, He will neces- 
sarily be in their words? In what way did it 
escape them that man is most of an agent, 



$o Humanism in New England Theology 

most of a creative power, when most under 
the influence of the Spirit of God, and that 
wherever words carry the burden of the 
Lord they carry that burden on the active 
humanity of men? How came it to pass that 
these acute thinkers did not discern the 
origin of the monumental parts of the Bible 
in the human life that God had filled with 
his Eternal presence? Had they faced such 
questions the Bible would have opened to 
them a new and a momentous expanse of 
human experience, the supreme opportunity 
for the achieving reason of man. 

There is only one answer to these ques- 
tions. These men conceived of the Bible as 
chiefly a book of mysteries; the doctrines of 
revealed religion were at heart mysteries, 
and the best work of the human intellect 
was done when the super-intelligible char- 
acter of the doctrine was exhibited. These 
doctrines were for faith and not for reason; 
they were for faith, not as all unverified 
ideas are for faith, but for faith as passing 



Humanism in New England Theology 51 

all understanding. The New England di- 
vinity was, therefore, in no adequate sense 
an expression of the free mind; it was not 
the result of the unrestricted use of reason. 
It was a compound of reason and tradition, 
the mixed issue of freedom and authority. 
It is not edifying to see Edwards, in the full 
movement of speculation, suddenly pause, 
begin a new section of his essay, and lug into 
his argument proof-texts from every corner 
of the Bible to cover the incompleteness of 
his rational procedure. He who had such 
high confidence in reason, so wide a vision 
of its field, and who exercised his own great 
gift of insight and argument with such fear- 
less vigor, yet never dreamed that the Bible 
itself is the supreme product of human rea- 
son and the supreme field for the exercise of 
the reason in the service of the Spirit. The 
isolation of the human from the Divine by 
all these thinkers, except Emmons, was per- 
haps the source of this limitation, the put- 
ting asunder of what God has forever 



52 Humanism in New England Theology 

joined. Whatever the cause may have been, 
the view that finds in the Bible the sover- 
eign expression of reason and the field for 
the exercise of reason of highest moment, 
was hidden from Edwards and all his suc- 
cessors; they never gained the least insight 
into the nature of the revelation recorded in 
the Bible. That revelation was to them a 
process singular, unique, different, not only 
in degree, but in kind, from the fife of holy 
souls among other nations and among them- 
selves, isolated, super-intelligible, an oracle 
whose message must be accepted even 
against the protest of the reason and the 
conscience. 

These criticisms apply equally, it need 
hardly be said, to traditional theology in its 
entire course. The attitude of indiscriminate 
ing reverence toward the Bible was, on the 
part of the New England divines, the inher- 
itance of faith. They were in bondage to a 
book, and while it is the supreme Book to 
which they were in bondage, the fact that 



Humanism in New England Theology 53 

here, in this greatest sphere of the free in- 
tellect, they had no dream of the function of 
the intellect, is another reason why their 
dominion has passed away. In ideal, in 
method, and in result they are superseded. 
Their ideal of the sphere of reason was a 
meager and restricted ideal; their method 
was without scientific temper and sureness; 
their results were the uncritical compound 
of error and truth, of essential and valueless, 
that one might expect. And if these words 
seem severe, let it be remembered that the 
holy cause of sound thinking in the interest 
of religion, especially in the interest of the 
Christian religion, has suffered too long 
from timidity in the presence of great 
names. 

It must be still further observed that ex- 
cept in a single direction the New England 
divinity refused to learn from its adversa- 
ries. It did indeed put itself in battle array. 
It became keenly alert to strategic positions 
both for offense and defense. Under attack 



34 Humanism in New England Theology 

it assumed a more compact and formidable 
dialectical shape. Comparison between the 
form which the New England divinity as- 
sumed in the hands of Edwards and his im- 
mediate successors, and that in which it 
was presented by N. W. Taylor and Ed- 
wards A. Park, shows that the system in the 
hands of these later masters gained greatly 
in dialectical strength. Indeed, Park spent 
too much of his force here. He had the gift 
of the dialectician in unsurpassed power. 
No man in our American world now living 
will bear comparison with him here. He de- 
veloped the logical function to the highest 
point of efficiency, and till they sat under 
the teaching of Park, students did not know 
how fascinating the logician could be. Dr. 
Foster is undoubtedly right in saying that 
this thinker did the best that could be done 
with the materials given him. 

But if strong opponents thus pressed the 
New England divinity into better dialecti- 
cal form in the hands of its later masters, 



Humanism in New England Theology 55 

these masters refused to learn materially 
from their adversaries. Arminianism was 
deeply concerned with the freedom of the 
will, and with the reality of man's responsi- 
bility for his deeds. New England Calvinism 
met this deep moral concern with ill-con- 
cealed logical contempt, with the ghostly 
distinction between natural ability and 
moral ability, and with the poor verbalism 
of the power of choice to the contrary 
which, apart from electing grace, in the 
entire history of mankind had never once 
been exercised. New England Calvinism, 
under pressure of the moral soundness and 
passion of Arminianism, never once faced, 
in scientific temper, the question of human 
freedom; it continued to treat this burning 
issue dialectically; it therefore refused to 
learn from an adversary less powerful than 
itself in intellect, but upon the question in 
debate morally deeper and truer far to the 
consciousness of normal men. 
Equally persistent was the refusal to 



56 Humanism in New England Theology 

learn from Unitarianism. From the first 
Unitarianism was regarded with dread as 
the supreme form of heresy. Unitarianism 
so wounded devout feeling for Jesus Christ, 
so struck at what it regarded here as su- 
perstition, appeared so indifferent to that 
which the New England divines conceived 
to be the essence of the Christian faith, that 
they are not without excuse in their attitude 
of exclusion. But while they are not without 
excuse, they are without justification. They 
failed in the presence of an immense oppor- 
tunity. For it has become obvious to com- 
petent judges in all denominations that 
Unitarianism, in the hands of Channing 
and his successors, rediscovered the Chris- 
tian doctrine of man. This is a service for 
which immortal thanks are due; and as is 
generally the way in cases of this kind, the 
thanks are expressed by silent appropria- 
tion on the part of all enlightened religious 
bodies of the idea thus rediscovered, and 
with no recognition, but with even aversion 



Humanism in New England Theology 57 

for the rediscoverers. To be sure, the Uni- 
tarians were quick to follow with a similar 
device. They took over into their body 
of thought, without acknowledgment and 
without reasoned insight, the heart of Trini- 
tarianism theology; they put into God the 
Father the content of character and pity 
found in the second person of the Trini- 
tarian faith; they gave what they had taken 
a new name and nothing more. Our business 
here, however, is not with the weakness but 
with the strength of Unitarianism in rela- 
tion to the exclusiveness of the New Eng- 
land divinity. In the face of the self-evident 
and glorious humanism of Jesus revived by 
the Unitarian movement, the masters of the 
traditional divinity presented on the whole 
a closed mind. In no perceptible degree 
did it influence their doctrine of man. He 
still continued, from birth to conversion 
and adoption, a lost soul and no child of 
God. v 
Here the failure of the New England di- 



58 Humanism in New England Theology 

vines meant disaster to their cause. They 
lost the chance to appropriate the Christian 
doctrine of man, to affirm two incarnations; 
one in all men because they are children of 
God; the other in Jesus Christ as the su- 
preme Son of God; one universal and the 
other ideal, in the light of which the univer- 
sal is to be understood. They lost the chance 
to renew in a deeper and surer way their 
doctrine of Christ and their doctrine of God 
through the new doctrine of man. This, I 
take it, is one of the greater mistakes of the 
traditional divinity. It never did see the 
value of man; it could not take in that value 
when brought to its attention by its Uni- 
tarian adversaries; it did not dream of the 
f ruitfulness for Christology and theology of 
a new consciousness of the worth of man. 
It was essentially, if the paradox may be 
pardoned, an inhuman humanism; it went 
to the wall finally because untrue to the 
teaching of Jesus concerning man and God. 
Properly understood, Unitarianism is the 



Humanism in New England Theology $q 

complement of Trinitarianism no less than 
its rival; that is, if the Trinitarian belief in a 
social God is to live, it must be matched 
with the Unitarian faith in a social human- 
ity. Further, there must be between the two 
sets of beliefs action and reaction, if they 
are to come to their full development. If 
with the Trinitarian we say God is Father, 
with the Unitarian we must say man is the 
inalienable child of God; if with the Trini- 
tarian we claim that there is a special, ideal 
incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, answer- 
ing to his vocation in the history of religion 
in the earth, we must contend with the Uni- 
tarian that there is a universal incarnation 
in mankind in virtue of which man is man 
with the impulse of the Eternal in his heart. 
In failing to see in the positive message of 
Unitarianism the complement to what was 
highest in their own faith, and the correc- 
tion of its malady of errors about man, the 
masters of the New England theology made 
a supreme mistake. 



60 Humanism in New England Theology 

Universalism was the third stout antago- 
nist of the New England divinity. It met 
with the exclusiveness which had been 
meted out to Unitarianism. Besides, a spe- 
cial scorn fell upon it because of its defi- 
ciency in scholarship and in intellectual 
power. There was, it must be admitted, 
some excuse for this attitude toward the 
new doctrine. In its early and popular 
forms Universalism was more concerned in 
getting all men to heaven than in getting 
them into a fit condition to enjoy heaven 
when they arrived there. Nothing could be 
more shocking to the majestic moral sense 
of the Puritan than popular Universalism's 
easy ideas about sin, its shallowness upon 
every question of conscience, its conversion 
of the most worthy Judge Eternal into 
an infinite, indiscriminating sentimentalist. 
From the first, Universalism was a great 
interest, but for many years it was an in- 
terest poorly served. It came as a protest 
against an inhuman view of God; it was not 



Humanism in New England Theology 61 

accompanied by a deep concern about per- 
sonal righteousness. It spent too much of 
its force in denunciation of the orthodox 
God and not enough upon the character of 
the universalist man. It did not go deep 
enough to see that man has but one interest, 
and that is righteousness. If it had seen this 
and seen it whole, it could have repeated 
with tremendous power the words of Soc- 
rates: "There is no evil that can happen to 
a good man, whether he be alive or dead"; 
and the kindred words of Paul, " All things 
work together for good to them that love 
God." If Universalism's doctrine of the 
future had risen up out of the heart of its 
passion to make man righteous, its power 
would have been greater far. As it stood 
it did not call for strenuous moral man- 
hood. 

This was an unutterable offense to the 
masters of the New England theology. This 
unfortunate circumstance concealed from 
them the real question raised by Universal- 



62 Humanism in New England Theology 

ism — the moral character of God. If they 
had been wise, they would have taken Whit- 
tier's "Eternal Goodness" as the form of 
the doctrine profitable for study; if they had 
been prophetic, they would have seen how 
the admission into their theodicy of the 
main contention of Universalism — the 
love of God for every soul that he has made 
and his everlasting purpose to pursue with 
his redeeming grace all souls in all worlds — 
would have given it new range, reality, life, 
and worth. For here again the heresy was 
the complement of the orthodoxy. The only 
original element in the New England divin- 
ity was its theodicy; that theodicy with the 
insight of Universalism left out was meager 
and hopeless; with this insight included as 
a principle of revision and extension the 
theodicy would have been living and potent 
to-day. For Universalism has brought for- 
ward the larger view; and the larger view 
has proved to be the worthier view. No in- 
terest of morality is endangered by the faith 



Humanism in New England Theology 63 

that the Infinite works and works eternally 
for the perfect righteousness of every hu- 
man soul. It will be seen, I think, that the 
moral hope of the race is grounded upon 
this faith. 

This inhospitality of the New England 
divinity toward new and reconstructive 
ideas, together with the other defects 
noted — its traditionalism, its inclusion of 
fatal contradiction in its own heart, its arti- 
ficial mode of thought, and its restricted use 
of reason — kept the system stationary in 
a swiftly growing world. It fell from power 
because it was found beneath the best re- 
ligious consciousness of the time. It was 
found to be outgrown in two fundamental 
ways; it was outgrown in knowledge and in 
ethical conceptions. A brief statement of 
fact is sufficient to show that it was out- 
grown in knowledge. It knew nothing of the 
application of the methods of free historical 
inquiry to the Bible. It never took the posi- 
tion of the scientific historian, regarding the 



64 Humanism in New England Theology 

rise and character of Biblical ideas. Of the 
Bible as it emerges from the study of the 
just and devout scientific scholar the New 
England divinity was simply ignorant. Its 
view of the Hebrew and Christian Scrip- 
tures was outgrown. In regard to the natu- 
ral history of man it was overtaken by the 
same fate. The theory that runs the many 
different forms of existence in the world 
to-day back to a common primitive vitality, 
that traces the wide-branching tree of life 
downward to one original root, they refused 
seriously to entertain. Adam was for them 
the head of the race behind which they did 
not care to go. To the last, in spite of the 
new vista introduced by evolution, the New 
England divines continued to build their 
doctrine of man upon a Hebrew myth. 
These men, with all their acuteness and 
power, were essentially provincial in their 
outlook upon the world. In general they 
knew next to nothing of the world of fruitful 
ideas in the philosophy of the Greeks and 



Humanism in New England Theology 65 

Germans; nor did they know deeply the 
best things in French and English philos- 
ophy. When compared with the greater 
systems of thought their system was a poor 
and meager formalism. The riches of the in- 
tellectual life of the world lay largely out- 
side their scheme. In general, of this world 
of wealth these men were unaware. In the 
few instances, like that of Henry B. Smith, 
where knowledge was ample, it meant noth- 
ing for the system of theology. Nor was 
there anywhere large knowledge of the 
great religions of the race outside of Chris- 
tianity, nor the least sign of a scientific tem- 
per toward them. Among the New England 
divines there is no such book as that of 
Maurice on "The Religions of the World." 
In consequence of this limitation of outlook 
to their own religion, they were unable to 
disengage in it the eternal from the tem- 
poral. They were almost as much concerned 
about miracles as they were about the life 
of God in the Christian soul. They never 



66 Humanism in New England Theology 

rose to the position from which the scholar 
sees that while miracles are the concomi- 
tants of all the religions, they are essential 
to none; that religion is essentially the life 
of God in man; and where God's life, as 
Infinite love, is purest and richest, as in 
Jesus Christ, there religion exists in its 
supreme form and power. 

That the later New England divines 
should have allowed themselves to be out- 
grown in knowledge is a surprise; that they 
should have allowed themselves to be out- 
grown in ethical ideas is something of a re- 
proach. Such is the fact. Edwards's vision 
of God, that upon which his rapt soul fed, 
that in whose strength he lived his great 
life, is destitute of reconstructive influence 
upon the Calvinism which he adopts and 
defends. The system of Edwards as a philos- 
ophy of man's world, upon the assumption 
that God exists and that He is absolutely 
good, is morally incredible. It is beneath the 
moral consciousness of the average respec- 



Humanism in New England Theology 67 

table person in any civilized community. 
Hopkins's ideal of a disinterested soul is 
great and of enduring and pathetic value, 
yet it in no way enabled him to read the 
character of the Eternal in terms consonant 
with an enlightened conscience. The doc- 
trines of the fall, ensuing universal deprav- 
ity, and obligation to obedience where only 
the ghost of power was conceded to exist in 
natural ability, limited election, limited be- 
stowment of saving grace, and eternal pun- 
ishment for all who were found impenitent 
at death, are as a whole a body of teaching 
entirely outgrown by enlightened men. It 
would, indeed, be the supreme miracle, the 
contradiction of the solemn order and best 
hope of mankind, if a system, thus found to 
lie far below the moral consciousness of en- 
lightened persons, should still maintain its 
ascendancy over them. The New England 
divinity fell from its ancient throne because 
it was found inadequate in knowledge and 
inferior in moral ideas. Its greatest over- 



68 Humanism in New England Theology 

sight I reserve for remark later, its failure 
to read the character of the universe by the 
sovereign fact in its faith, the character of 
Jesus Christ. 




ni 

[IT is high time to change the tenor 
of remark, since this discussion is 
not wholly a diagnosis of the 
causes of death, nor altogether an obituary 
of the New England theology. It is high 
time to call attention to the surviving worth 
in it, to the eternal soul that we recognize 
all the more clearly that the old formalism 
in which it lived has passed away. This pre- 
cious survival is both subjective and objec- 
tive, a tradition of great men devoted to 
the highest human interest and a cluster 
of shining and imperishable ideas. 

When the general growth of the commu- 
nity in knowledge has rendered obsolete a 
previous system of thought, it is the easiest 
thing in the world, and one of the cheapest, 
to underestimate the intellectual power of 
the masters of that system. From this sort 
of ruthless inhumanity fair-minded men 



70 Humanism in New England Theology 

recoil. Progress calls for the conservation of 
every kind of noble power, and among the 
noblest kinds of power is the authentic tra- 
dition of great minds, enthusiastically de- 
voted to the discovery and the defense of 
the ultimate meaning of man's world. The 
person who can read the greater treatises of 
Edwards without perceiving that he is in 
contact with an extraordinary intellect is 
not to be envied. Edwards impresses the 
honest and competent student as a mind 
of uncommon acuteness, massiveness, and 
depth. He is amazing in the fertility and 
force of his argumentative power. He ap- 
proaches the character of the Platonic phi- 
losopher as a "spectator of all time and all 
existence." Under idioms of behef and 
speech that are outgrown, it is easy to rec- 
ognize speculative genius of a high order, 
and pervading the speculation the passion 
of a great religious genius. The image of this 
great thinker on the banks of the Connecti- 
cut or among the Berkshire Hills is an abid- 



Humanism in New England Theology 71 

ing consolation to all serious students of 
man's great and tragic world. And the 
higher the student rises in intellectual 
power and in moral passion, the more mas- 
sive and beautiful in his imagination will 
the great figure of Edwards loom. 

Few preachers are so highly trained as to 
be incapable of learning anything concern- 
ing the prophetic function from the works 
of Joseph Bellamy. He was a Connecticut 
pastor, in many ways isolated from the 
great world of learning; yet in his isolation 
he annexed the fortunes of the race to his 
parish and fixed in it a large vision of the 
universe. This man's ministry was not con- 
cerned with the organization of clubs, nor 
with serving tables. It was free from the pet- 
tiness that is the curse of the ministry in our 
time. It was occupied with the dispensation 
of the Eternal, and made its power felt in 
every parish and in every academic center 
in New England. It knew, too, the art of 
sound reasoning and clear, effective speech. 



72 Humanism in New England Theology 

It remains a tradition of intellectual and 
moral power fitted to aid materially to-day 
in recalling preachers to the exalted possi- 
bilities of their vocation. 

Of Samuel Hopkins, Dr. Charming 
writes: 

He was an illustration of the power of our 
spiritual nature. In narrow circumstances, with 
few outward indulgences, in great seclusion, he 
yet found much to enjoy. He lived in a world 
of thought, above all earthly passions. ^ 

It is not strange that out of such a soul 
should have come the loftiest piece of moral 
idealism in the literature of our country. 
His essay on the " Nature of True Holiness " 
is indeed a kind of classic upon the life of 
the spirit and the heights to which a great 
soul may soar. Here was a mind that had 
found the supreme secret of existence; that 
had found it in the world of love and service 
girt about with privation of every kind, and 
pitiless misunderstandings. Channing fur- 
ther relates of this master: 



Humanism in New England Theology 73 

I preached for him once, and after the service 
in the pulpit he smiled on me, and said, "The 
hat is not made yet" On my asking an explana- 
tion, he told me that Dr. Bellamy used to 
speak of theology as a progressive science, and 
compared the different stages of it to the suc- 
cessive processes of making a hat. The beaver 
was to be born, then to be killed, and then the 
felt to be made, etc. Having thus explained the 
similitude, he added, "The hat is not made, 
and I hope you will help to finish it." 

The devout wish was fulfilled in Channing, 
and still it is true that "the hat is not 
made." This sense of the incompleteness of 
the work of his hands, of the work of his 
generation, is indispensable to the thinker 
in every science; it is indispensable to the 
thinker in the science of theology; and it is 
the precious inheritance from the New Eng- 
land divines. 

Nathanael Emmons is a unique figure in 
the history of the New England divinity. 
He was a master in the construction of great 
sermons, many volumes of which were pub- 
lished, and which for two generations had 



74 Humanism in New England Theology 

an extensive circulation. He was a thinker, 
acute, fearless, formidable; a teacher of the- 
ology who trained and sent into the minis- 
try more than one hundred preachers; a 
theist whose vision of God carried him at 
times into pure pantheism; a splendid pa- 
triot and a great man whose more than 
ninety-five years of existence in this world 
is a tradition of many-sided power, of 
power, too, in a country minister, difficult 
to match, and still more difficult to sur- 
pass, in the history of any community. For 
the daring mind of to-day Emmons has a 
peculiar fascination. His sermons on "Di- 
vine and Human Agency " recall Spinoza. 
His terrible sermon on " Reprobation' ' dis- 
covers the impossible side of every system 
of pantheism. In this and in other sermons 
of a like nature Emmons will tolerate no 
disguises. He is absolutely frank and fear- 
less. It was, indeed, a great community that 
could accord complete freedom to the man 
who thus turned New England Calvinism 



Humanism in New England Theology 75 

into pantheism. Here is an example of Em- 
mons's manner: 

Since the Scriptures ascribe all the actions of 
men to God as well as to themselves, we may 
justly conclude that the Divine agency is as 
much concerned in their bad as in their good 
actions. Men are no more capable of acting 
independently in the one instance than the 
other. It is God who worketh in men, both to 
will and to do in all cases without exception. 
He wrought equally in the minds of those who 
sold and in the minds of those who bought 
Joseph. He wrought as effectually in the minds 
of Joseph's brethren, when they sold him, as 
when they repented and besought his mercy. 
He not only prepared these persons to act, but 
made them act. 

This man had the courage of his convic- 
tions, and from him we learn that freedom 
in New England Congregationalism did not 
begin yesterday. 

Nathaniel W. Taylor has come in for his 
full share of criticism in this discussion, nor 
am I able to agree with Dr. Foster in his 
estimate of the importance of this thinker. 



?6 Humanism in New England Theology 

It would, however, be a manifest injustice 
to refuse to recognize his eminence. It is 
hardly possible to read his work on "The 
Moral Government of God" without ad- 
miration for his penetration, his method of 
exposition, his logical alertness and skill. 
Once more we have in Taylor the example 
of an eminent mind lifted into great effi- 
ciency through severe and continued disci- 
pline. Such intellects shed upon ordinary 
minds something of their own grandeur; 
and their steadfast diligence, their unslack- 
ening and arduous toil in the service of their 
cause, is a tradition that wise men will not 
willingly let die. 

In Edwards A. Park, whom the writer 
knew, the most striking characteristic was 
the native force of his intellect and the de- 
gree of brilliant efficiency to which it had 
been raised by prolonged and consummate 
discipline. For skill and power in deductive 
argument Professor Park has never been 
surpassed by any thinker in our history. If 



Humanism in New England Theology 77 

the stuff in which he dealt had been as good 
as the manner in which he handled it, Park 
would have been irresistible. His weakness 
was that of his school, material weakness; 
in formal skill, finish, and power he stood at 
the head of his school. It is, indeed, to be 
regretted that the memory of such gifts for 
logical discussion as those possessed by Pro- 
fessor Park, gifts that resembled immense 
logical instincts raised by long and energetic 
practice into marvelous efficiency, should 
become dim. Park's excellence here was a 
kind of object lesson in the intellectual 
world. Through this excellence he became 
the greatest teacher upon serious subjects 
that the country has ever known, and the 
tradition of this keen, accomplished, and 
powerful mind is too valuable to be per- 
mitted without protest to pass into oblivion. 
In the dauntless intellectual bearing and 
militant power of the entire New England 
school there is much to interest and instruct 
the teacher and preacher of Christianity 



78 Humanism in New England Theology 

to-day. In respect of intellectual magnitude 
and discipline, we may well say, 

" We are scarce our father's shadows cast at noon." 

There is an objective survival in the New 
England system that as a system has per- 
ished. Certain abiding principles are con- 
cealed in the passing forms like wheat in the 
chaff. Criticism here is a process, not of 
extinction, but of winnowing. This process 
leads to a clearer possession of the substance 
of faith that has been in the Christian 
Church from early days, and that will re- 
main in it so long as it shall have a gos- 
pel to offer to mankind. Sovereignty, sin, 
judgment, redemption, and the everlasting 
worth of the human soul, under fresh inter- 
pretation, and with richer content, are to 
emerge from the critical process as the new 
five points of faith. While men believe in the 
Infinite mind, while they believe that the 
Infinite mind is Almighty love, they must 
continue to believe in the sovereignty of 



Humanism in New England Theology 79 

God. Something must be sovereign in this 
universe. Is it blind fate or intelligence, 
brute power, aimless, unconscious, or spirit? 
These are the alternatives, and while Faith 
is sane, she cannot hesitate in the choice of 
her ultimate principle. To be assured that 
the final sovereignty in this universe is 
the sovereignty of character, righteous and 
competent, would be the infinite consola- 
tion; to be able to believe in this sovereignty 
must continue to be the supreme privilege 
of Christian faith. 

Against the moral idealism of the world 
there stands forth the tremendous fact of 
sin. Whether traced to Adam or to a pre- 
human ancestor in no way alters the fact. 
The ape of evolution brings into human his- 
tory the same problem brought by the 
Adam of the traditional theology. The cry 
of man in his moral pain is still, Who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death? The 
intellect in the service of the conscience still 
presents its vision of the good; the intellect 



80 Humanism in New England Theology 

in the sendee of the animal still presents its 
vision of apparent good; and between these 
visions of good essential and good apparent, 
the soul of man is still in distress. In this 
sense the race of man is still sold under sin. 
Moral ignorance, perversity, misery, con- 
tinue to be the deepest and darkest woes in 
human history. The only adequate name 
for man's world is tragedy. The theology 
that would save itself from shallowness and 
contempt must renew its vision of sin. Old 
definitions may be inadequate, old deriva- 
tions may be antiquated, ancient treatises 
on original sin may have become mere black 
mythologies; still, between the soul and the 
eternal good stand the terrible forms of 
human ignorance, perversity, weakness, and 
woe. Into this tragic world of man ancient 
thinkers looked with profound vision; that 
vision must be 'renewed by the thinkers of 
this modern time who would know what 
man is and what he needs in order that he 
may become what it is in him to be. 



Humanism in New England Theology 81 

The judgment of the Eternal God is es- 
sential to a living and militant faith. All 
kinds of behavior cannot be equally pleas- 
ing to God, if He is a being of moral dis- 
crimination, nor can any soul fall outside 
the circle of his judgment if every soul is of 
infinite consequence. The sense of the judg- 
ment of God issues in two feelings, one of 
awe in the presence of the final test of char- 
acter, the other of hope that the soul in its 
evil habit should be of concern to the In- 
finite. Here the ideal of the saint is renewed; 
here the hope of the sinner is revived; here 
in both saint and sinner the consciousness 
of the infinite dignity of human life is 
wrought into new intensity and majesty. So 
long as men believe that the world is under 
the judgment of God, so long will awe and 
hope, and the sense of the high import of 
man's life, continue in the earth. If faith 
would be permanent, it must include belief 
in the eternal righteous judgment of God. 

Redemption is a word for which we in 



82 Humanism in New England Theology 

this day have little fondness. In so far as 
this means a revolt from ancient ideas about 
the moral distress of men, it is justifiable; in 
so far as it signifies that we belong to the 
respectable and comfortable class in society, 
secure in our moral conceit, it is not credit- 
able. Redemption has meant deliverance, 
deliverance of man from his distress by the 
Almighty help of God; and in Christianity 
it has signified the same thing through the 
career of Jesus Christ and his servants. If 
there be no redemption, there can be in our 
theology no principle of it. If there be no 
redemption, the world still waits for the 
advent of its supreme helper. 

Under new names the old principle of 
redemption is in fact more widely ac- 
cepted and more efficiently used to-day 
than at any time since the apostolic age. 
Our optimism is nothing but our confidence 
in the coming deliverance of man. Our 
enthusiasm for education, missions, social 
service, pure politics, good government, 



Humanism in New England Theology 83 

true religion, and a hundred aspects of the 
Christian ideal, is at heart a new confession 
of confidence in the great idea of redemp- 
tion. We are seizing an old idea, delivering 
it from its mythological setting, clearing it 
of its aeonian narrowness, translating it into 
a richer and vaster conception, and making 
it the final platform upon which as servants 
of the ideal we take our stand. And with 
these four beliefs — sovereignty, sin, judg- 
ment, redemption — there goes that in the 
permanence of the human soul. This belief 
is to-day, in the great centers of intellectual 
life, in many cases, timid, apologetic, hypo- 
thetic. A profounder faith in God, as the 
infinite lover of men and a deeper life in 
his love, will restore this great belief. It is 
bound up with the consciousness of the 
moral dignity of men; while that lasts, it 
cannot perish; when that waxes in vigor, it 
will return in power. The mystery of the 
enswathement of the human spirit in flesh 
is great. It has been obvious to the thinker 



84 Humanism in New England Theology 

since thought began. It has been dwelt upon 
with peculiar intensity, sometimes with ex- 
clusive attention, during the last two gener- 
ations of thinkers. The deeper mystery of 
the enswathement of the human spirit in 
God has faded from the consciousness of the 
time. It is this mystery that contains the 
key to the other; as Emerson sang: 

" Lost in God, in Godhead found! " 

We may believe, therefore, that the New 
England theology will have this reproduc- 
tion of its essential ideas, at least in the new 
evangelical creed of the future. The old five 
points of the Calvinistic divinity might not 
be able to recognize the image of themselves 
as reproduced in the new five points of the 
divinity of to-day; but it is not seldom thus 
in the preservation of continuity. The prin- 
ciple of inheritance is often obscured in that 
of variation, the law of parenthood is fre- 
quently lost in the advent of a fresh gift 
from God. It may prove to be the case that 



Humanism in New England Theology 85 

the traditional theology has, in a general 
way, set a type from which the Christian 
mind as a whole will never depart. A few 
remarks concerning the possible forms of 
this persisting type may not unfittingly 
close this discussion. 




IV 

jlYPES of thought fundamental in 
their nature endure. The Platonic 
type of idealism endures, the 
transcendental type, whether Plato is re- 
garded as an adequate master of it or not. 
The Aristotelian type of idealism endures; 
the immanental type, that which finds in 
the Eternal the force that gives meaning 
and character to the world of fact, whether 
the method and conclusions of Aristotle are 
or are not looked upon as acceptable. Ma- 
terialism has many forms, but the type en- 
dures. Mind is referred to that which is 
lower than itself; the highest in human ex- 
perience is under the ultimate sovereignty 
of that which is lowest, and this again by an 
abyss out beyond the individual soul. This 
is the essence of materialism, and this way 
of reading the meaning of existence endures. 
Pure phenomenalism is a persistent type, 



Humanism in New England Theology 87 

the type that regards our human world as a 
vagrant, mean or mighty, in the dark im- 
mensities by which it is surrounded. In the 
sphere of ethics we have epicureanism, an- 
cient and modern; stoicism, old and new; 
Hellenism, with its matter and form in ideal 
synthesis; Christianity, with its temporal 
filled with the eternal spirit. For many gen- 
erations, at least, there will continue to exist 
different types of theological thought. These 
different schools of thought will continue to 
be influenced by ideals widely unlike. If we 
should say that the common ideal of the- 
ology is to give to the reason an adequate 
account of the religious life of mankind, 
that life is itself smitten with multiplicity 
and contrast. For critical students there 
must be some one religion which shall 
commend itself as highest. For the equal 
student who is a thinker that one highest 
religion will issue an ideal in the light of 
which he will build his philosophy of the 
spiritual life of mankind. For a long time, 



88 Humanism in New England Theology 

in the sphere of the philosophy of religion, 
as in other departments of the philosophy 
of human existence, we must endure multi- 
plicity and contrast; we must seek to learn 
from them, and through this wider mutual 
understanding do something to bring on 
the day of ultimate simplicity and unity in 
the religious vision of the world. 

Every form of theism is founded upon a 
humanistic interpretation of the universe. 
The human mind finds itself plus infinity in 
the universe. Matter is reduced to force, the 
ordered force is reduced to mind, the mind 
is the supreme spirit. Thus the cosmos 
melts, before the ardor of the theistic mood, 
into mind. And the same process takes 
place in the consideration of our human 
world, with a result infinitely richer. Intel- 
lect and character in man, moral experience 
in the societies of men, the moral order in 
the life of nations and races, the moral 
world in the history of mankind, terminate 
in the mind and conscience of the moral 



Humanism in New England Theology 8g 

Deity. In every case, therefore, whether 
justifiable or not is not now the question, 
theism is the interpretation of the universe 
in accordance with the principle of human 
personality. Theism is essentially and eter- 
nally humanism. 

Varieties of this theistic humanism will 
continue to exist. The varieties will be of 
two kinds; those resulting from fundamen- 
tal differences in method, and those result- 
ing from different estimates of the historic 
expressions of the religious spirit. The New 
England divinity is at heart a variety of 
humanism. As a type it will endure; as a 
system of opinion, expressive of that type, 
it has passed away. From the new outlook 
which we have now attained, we see new 
reasons for this result. The humanism of 
the New England divinity had two fatal 
defects — one intellectual, the other moral. 
It used as its guiding principle governmen- 
tal analogies ; it lived and moved and had its 
being in civic relations; it read the character 



go Humanism in New England Theology 

of the Supreme Mind through these rela- 
tions, with the inevitable result that God 
was for it a King, a moral Governor, and 
men were subjects under this King and 
Governor. This was the intellectual defect 
of the humanism. It was in no sense Chris- 
tian in its humanistic principle. Jesus says, 
"Our Father who art in heaven"; He adds, 
"Thy kingdom come"; but the Divine 
Fatherhood is primary. The parental and 
filial relation in human life is for Jesus the 
supreme principle in the reading of the 
character of God. Jesus speaks of his Fath- 
er's house. Here again the human home is 
used as the institution through which the 
eternal life in God is to be apprehended. 
The humanism of Jesus is parental and 
filial; it is essential and everlasting human- 
ism. The humanism of the New England 
divinity is external, subordinate, temporal. 
This structural defect runs through the 
entire system; from the first under this 
defect the system was doomed. 



Humanism in New England Theology gi 

The moral defect of the New England 
humanism lies in the terrible negative 
which it carries in its heart. God creates all; 
puts all in a world in which all will surely 
fall into sin; so regards sin that the sinner 
is doomed to eternal misery; and yet this 
same God elects to salvation and provides 
for the salvation of a part only of this lost 
race. Humanism here falls beneath the dig- 
nity of a good man. It justifies the retort of 
Father Taylor, the sailor preacher of Bos- 
ton, to the Calvinistic preacher, " Your God 
stands for my devil." In such a conception 
of God there is no hint of Christianity; in at- 
taining this conception of God the kind of 
humanism employed is surely not that 
found in the prayer of Jesus on the Cross, 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do." The New England divinity 
has perished, therefore, because it was a 
form of humanism wanting in depth and 
wanting in worth. 

Still, the type of humanism which the 



Q2 Humanism in New England Theology 

system served while it lived, endures, and 
is bound to endure. That type sets a high 
value upon certain kinds of spiritual experi- 
ence; it also attempts to read the character 
of the Eternal, not through man the indi- 
vidual, but through man the social being; 
in other words, it is evangelical in its reli- 
gious feeling and Trinitarian in its vision of 
God. 

This type of humanism looks upon our 
world under the form of tragedy. Between 
good apparent and good essential the 
world is still in a profound sense a lost 
World; that is, it is lost to the Divine end 
and use of existence, and it is a world in 
which misery natural and moral abounds. 
The experience of Paul, when he cried, "0 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death"; of Augus- 
tine in his bitter struggle against a sensual 
habit; of Luther in his horror in the presence 
of an apparently impossible moral ideal — 
is in less emphatic forms and in a general 



Humanism in New England Theology Q3 

way the experience of awakened men in a 
Christian community. The great need is 
moral deliverance, moral hope and peace. 
When men are delivered from this woe they 
naturally become, to their fellow men still 
in distress, apostles, missionaries, preachers, 
and servants of the gospel of deliverance. 
The center of the world is tragedy, and the 
new insights and the emancipations from 
old ideas are built round this center. The 
new vision of truth to which the descend- 
ants of the old creed have come may be the 
common heritage of the enlightened reli- 
gious spirit; yet in their case a certain fer- 
vor, a unique feeling, a passion as of one 
living in a world of tragedy, pervades the 
vision and flushes its calm features into 
solemnity and hope. 

I have said this feeling is evangelical; that 
is, it is formed with reference to the message 
and person of Jesus Christ. He occupies the 
center of the historic field. Theo-centric in 
conclusion, this feeling under reflection is 



94 Humanism in New England Theology 

Christo-centric in its method of interpreta- 
tion; the attachment to the person of Jesus 
as the bearer and doer of the Eternal gospel 
is ardent and profound. He is the way over 
which the seeking God and the seeking soul 
alike go, in the highest religious community; 
the way in which the seekers meet. The feel- 
ing for Jesus on the part of his first disciples 
is a continuous feeling; the definitions ac- 
companying the feeling may change while 
the feeling endures. This profound feeling 
for Jesus is the emotional side of the type 
of faith, served, while it lived, by the New 
England divinity. Jesus was God's way 
toward man; He was man's way toward 
God; and thus there sprung up in the heart 
the feeling of the indispensableness of the 
Lord. This sense of his indispensableness 
issued in a unique state of the heart toward 
Him; and this state of the heart toward the 
indispensable Master is not weaker, but 
stronger, in the free descendants of the New 
England divines. 



Humanism in New England Theology g$ 

We turn now from the emotional aspect 
of the type to its philosophical principle. 
Here, for the sake of clearness, it must be 
said that there is but one mood toward the 
universe that is non-humanistic. That mood 
is the agnostic mood. It sees that man must 
use his own nature in the interpretation of 
the ultimate reality if he is to attain an 
interpretation of it, and this the agnostic 
spirit refuses to do. Every positive view of 
the universe is attained under the guidance 
of some aspect of the personality of man 
used as the principle of interpretation. Ma- 
terialism, whether crass or refined, is finally 
the construction of a theory of the universe 
through the medium of the bodily life; the 
philosophy that sums up the character of 
the Infinite as unconscious force uses as 
interpreter one phase of the human per- 
sonality — will — abstracted from intelli- 
gence. Theism reduces itself to two forms; 
the interpretation of God through man the 
individual, and the apprehension of God 



q6 Humanism in New England Theology 

through man the social being. The world 
of facts lies open to the scientific investiga- 
tor; the world of religious feeling and char- 
acter lies before the student of religion; the 
world of spiritual reality in Christianity is 
in the vision of the competent inquirer upon 
this branch of history. In each case facts 
have a determining influence in the selec- 
tion of the special phase of the human per- 
sonality to be employed as the principle 
of interpretation. Certain facts, such as 
the apparent sovereignty of the lower 
forces over the higher, appeal to the ma- 
terialist; other facts, such as the seeming 
blind might and majesty of the cosmos and 
our human world, control the mind of the 
fatalist; other facts still, such as the indis- 
putable evidence of purpose in the universe, 
compel the mind of the theist; and once 
again, there are orders of fact that incline 
the theist now toward Deism and then 
toward Trinitarianism. But the facts are 
impotent without the guiding principle; in 



Humanism in New England Theology gy 

every case that is borrowed from the human 
personality. I repeat, therefore, that every 
form of theism is a form of humanism. The 
collapse of the New England divinity has 
left in power to the future the type of the- 
ism known as the Trinitarian type. 

It must be admitted that the form of the- 
ism most popular to-day in all the churches 
is that gained through the use of man the 
individual. Preachers in all communions 
have in large numbers turned from Trini- 
tarianism. It is not publicly denied or dis- 
carded; it is secretly confessed to have be- 
come no part of the working philosophy of 
religion. This mood will doubtless continue 
to prevail to some extent in all the churches. 
For certain minds the interpretation of the 
universe through man the individual is su- 
premely attractive, because of its appar- 
ent simplicity, straightforwardness, freedom 
from contradiction, and from the heavy, 
although at times transfigured fogs, that 
forever lie on the seas of mysticism. Whaft 



pS Humanism in New England Theology 

is known as Arianism, and again what is 
known as Unitarianism, sets a distinct and 
persistent type of theism. It is well to recog- 
nize its principle of interpretation, its philo- 
sophical method, and its enduring fascina- 
tions for certain orders of mind. It is well to 
confess that it is one of two rival types of 
Christian theism, and that to-day it is win- 
ning increasing confidence and support. It 
should be added that this type of theism 
holds, inconsistently as it seems to me, that 
its God is love in his inmost essence, that it 
carries over into its Deity pretty much the 
same moral content that one finds in its 
great rival type. In my judgment this 
moral content does not belong to it, nor do 
I think it will remain permanently with the 
type, if it shall continue unchanged; but as 
matter of fact this moral richness is now 
there. 

The type of theism inherited from the 
New England divinity is the Trinitarian 
type. It has not perished, as is sometimes 



Humanism in New England Theology gg 

rashly imagined, in the passing of that sys- 
tem. It is imperishable because it is founded 
upon the richest and worthiest form of hu- 
manism. It is useless to say that the Trinity 
was invented to make room in the Godhead 
for Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit of 
whom He spoke. Perhaps this may be the 
literal truth; that it is not the essential 
truth I am persuaded. Even on the surface 
of the history it is plain that, while the new 
doctrine of God may have been mainly 
suggested by the supreme career in the 
Gospels, that doctrine is logically prior to 
Christianity, logically prior to historic hu- 
manity. Besides, no ancient theologian of 
the first rank makes room in the Godhead 
for Jesus; he simply discerns a unique as- 
sociation between Jesus and one phase of 
the Godhead — the Eternal Son, between 
whom and all men, because they are men, 
there is an intimate and abiding association. 
In recent centuries there is a cloud of confu- 
sion resting upon the doctrine of God and 



ioo Humanism in New England Theology 

the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Into this fog- 
bank I have sailed elsewhere, and I have no 
time for another excursion now. 

What we are concerned with here is 
not primarily historic situations, but philo- 
sophical principles. The reasons why the 
Trinity has been abandoned so largely in all 
communions of Christian faith are mainly 
two : superficiality in thought, and inability 
to grasp the principle at work in the entire 
history of Trinitarianism. Perhaps the two 
reasons should be reduced to one. If Trini- 
tarianism were seen to be — what it un- 
questionably is — the result, in theistic be- 
lief, of the use of man the social being as 
the guide to the being of God, it could not 
appear to be the sanctified nonsense which 
it undoubtedly seems to be to many men 
to-day. Man by himself is no man. The in- 
dividual is neither parent, nor child, nor 
lover, nor friend. The individual man is no 
man. Social man is the being we know, and 
social man, with his dower of love and his 



Humanism in New England Theology 101 

burning moral idealism, is the being whose 
ground we seek in the Eternal. If the Eter- 
nal is a bare individual, it is an impenetrable 
mystery how He can be a moral being; and 
we are inclined to conclude with Aristotle, 
that morality, except in the form of intel- 
lectual integrity, is foreign to the nature of 
God. If the Eternal is a pure everlasting 
egoist, again it passes understanding how 
He can be represented in an altruistic hu- 
manity. That the Deity has the power to 
create forms of life different from his own, 
the world of life may be held to prove. Still, 
in every case there is fundamental identity. 
The link between the nature of God and the 
world of matter is force; force being un- 
meaning save as a phase of will. The infinite 
variety in the forms of life are again one 
with God, in that he is the living God. 
When we come to man we have a being 
whose essential nature is love. If God does 
not answer to man here, He falls below the 
work of his hands. But love, so far as we 



102 Humanism in New England Theology 

can see, is impossible except in a social be- 
ing; if therefore God is lover in some mystic 
way, He must be social. The question is 
how to evolve from an egoistic Deity an 
altruistic humanity. To answer this ques- 
tion of the evolution of humanity is one 
of the fundamental problems of theism; it 
would seem to be a desperate problem for 
Deistic theism. 

I am here simply stating a principle of 
faith; I am not arguing now for the truth of 
a doctrine. The point is that the Trinitarian 
type of theism has survived the collapse of 
the old divinity; it will continue to survive 
because it is founded on a distinctive con- 
ception of man employed as a guide to the 
being of God. And it should be said, in sim- 
ple justice to this type, and all the more 
because its friends seem to be few, and these 
few appear to sit most of the time under the 
shadow of fear, that the less we think of 
man the mere individual, the less disposed 
shall we be to rest in the form of theism to 



Humanism in New England Theology 103 

which it leads; that the more we regard man 
as essentially a social being, the more in- 
clined shall we be to trust the form of 
theism toward which it points. 

The high contention, therefore, between 
the Unitarian and Trinitarian types of the- 
ism is not ended. It is only at its clear be- 
ginning. So far as it has been a contention 
in enmity, it has had its dismal day. The 
sooner this phase of the debate is utterly 
transcended, the better it will be for the 
cause of truth and character. A nobler de- 
bate now opens, a debate without which the 
intellect loses half its vigilance and vigor, 
the struggle in equal honor and utter free- 
dom between the two types of theism. In 
this invigorating and honorable contest the 
writer stands in the line of descent from the 
New England divines. His theism is social 
theism; he is an out-and-out Trinitarian; at 
the same time he is moved to confess that 
he does not find himself in a multitude that 
no man can number. 



104 Bumanism in New England Theology 

Humanism as a philosophical principle 
covers both varieties of theism, and theism 
is after all the sovereign interest of religion. 
That theism is at heart humanism may be 
said to be a new insight. That it is not ab- 
solutely new the famous remark of Xeno- 
crates, about the way in which animals 
would construe the universe if they were in 
a position to construe it, clearly shows. Still 
this form of thought, in its complete self- 
consciousness, is essentially new. When we 
construe the Eternal by the human we take 
the risk of faith. We may be mistaken, yet 
our mistake is a tribute to the Eternal. We 
judge Him by our best, and add thereto 
infinity. Humanism is our greatest word 
because it covers the greatest fact that 
we know — the phenomenal world of man. 
This phenomenal world is our surest path 
to the Eternal. We have no means of getting 
at what is except through what appears; 
and the highest appearance is the highest 
revelation of the hidden reality. Contempt 



Humanism in New England Theology 105 

for man's world is contempt for the world of 
the highest man, Jesus of Nazareth, and 
contempt for his world is contempt for the 
Eternal, if the Eternal has equal worth. The 
phenomenal world is all that we have; nor 
is it a world isolated, vagrant, desolate. The 
Eternal is its refuge, and underneath it are 
the everlasting arms. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



